Ethics in the Real World: 82 Brief Essays on Things That Matter

Review

Longlisted for the 2017 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, Pen American Center

In his new book, Ethics in the Real World, Mr. Singer picks up the topics of animal rights and poverty amelioration and runs quite far with them. . . . This book is interesting because it offers a chance to witness this influential thinker grapple with more offbeat questions.---Dwight Garner, New York Times

A terrific recent book . . . that wrestles with how much we should donate to charity, and whether wearing a $10,000 watch is a sign of good taste, or of shallow narcissism.---Nicholas Kristof, New York Times

Perhaps more than any modern philosopher, Peter Singer has focused on the question of how to live a better life. If you want a philosophy that can directly alleviate human and animal suffering, read this wonderful book.---Sam Harris, author of the, New York Times

Philosophy should be a more public endeavor, and Singer's work is an excellent entry point. In a fall that will be shaped by a political contest in many ways detached from genuinely pressing moral issues, it might also serve as a refreshingly complex source of ethical questioning.---Talya Zax, Forward

Singer demonstrates how to write pungently and succinctly about moral philosophy.---Daniel Johnson, Standpoint

Inspiring and enlivening; each essay is an easily digested nugget of acute, inventive reasoning and moral urgency, focused on practical, achievable results and the resistance of lazy, dogmatic thinking. . . . Any reader will find the book accessible; every reader will find it both thought-provoking and challenging.---Shane N. Glackin, Quarterly Review of Biology

Singer is a provocative, well-informed and hands-on philosopher, with a lucid and engaging writing style. The collection provides a comprehensive and accessible overview of themes that are central to Singer's ethics. . . . His essays are well-structured, engaging, and exemplarily clear. Moreover, his arguments tend to be nuanced and non-dogmatic, in spite of his well-known ethical agenda: here is an ethicist not looking for arguments to support a preconceived conclusion, but sincerely pondering the implications of his utilitarian stance."---Jeroen Hopster, Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics

"Peter Singer, one of the world's best-known and most significant philosophers, addresses some profoundly important issues in this book. He presents the issues and arguments with a lucidity, accessibility, and sharpness reminiscent of Bertrand Russell, another philosopher who sought to have a serious social impact. Ethics in the Real World will undoubtedly be a force for the good."--Bart Schultz, University of Chicago

"Peter Singer is among the most vital moral voices of our time. He urges us to confront not only the question of what we should not do, but also the harder and larger questions of what we should do, and how much we owe to others."--Larissa MacFarquhar, author of Strangers Drowning: Grappling with Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Overpowering Urge to Help

From the Back Cover

"Peter Singer is among the most vital moral voices of our time. He urges us to confront not only the question of what we should not do, but also the harder and larger questions of what we should do, and how much we owe to others."--Larissa MacFarquhar, author of Strangers Drowning: Grappling with Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Overpowering Urge to Help

"Read this book. Every chapter will make you think. Some hopefully will make you think differently."--Dean Karlan, coauthor of More Than Good Intentions: Improving the Ways the World's Poor Borrow, Save, Farm, Learn, and Stay y

"Peter Singer might well be the most important philosopher alive. He is certainly one of the most enjoyable to read, and it's a joy to browse through this collection of his smart short essays. This is public philosophy at its best--clear, controversial, and deeply rational."--Paul Bloom, author of Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil

"Peter Singer has done more good for the world than any other living philosopher, with ideas that have helped fight poverty, transform medical ethics, and protect animals. In this collection of popular essays, his intellect, courage, humanity, good sense, and good humor shine through. This is practical philosophy at its very best, stripped of all pretense and wisely applied to the most important questions of our time."--Joshua Greene, author of Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them

"Peter Singer, one of the world's best-known and most significant philosophers, addresses some profoundly important issues in this book. He presents the issues and arguments with a lucidity, accessibility, and sharpness reminiscent of Bertrand Russell, another philosopher who sought to have a serious social impact. Ethics in the Real World will undoubtedly be a force for the good."--Bart Schultz, University of Chicago